“That's cool.” Will grinned, and then looked at Ted. “It was a bomb, right?”

Ted nodded slowly. “Yes, it was.” He was a good-looking, bright kid, much like his brother. Fernanda had three nice kids.

“Do you know who did it?” Will inquired, and Ted pulled out the mug shot again and handed it to him.

“Have you ever seen this man around here?” Ted asked quietly.

“He did it?” Will looked intrigued and stared at it for a long time. Carlton Waters's eyes had the same mesmerizing effect on him, and then he handed it back to Ted and shook his head. None of them had ever seen Carlton Waters, which was something. It didn't totally confirm Waters's innocence, but it made his guilt a lot more unlikely.

“We're just checking out possibilities. There's nothing to link him to it for now. Have you ever seen him, Will?”

“No, I haven't.” The boy shook his head. “Anyone else?” Will enjoyed talking to him, and thought he was a good man. He conveyed decency and integrity, and he had an easy way with kids.

“Not yet. We'll let you know.” Ted looked at his watch then, and said he had to go. Fernanda walked him back downstairs and he stood in the doorway for a minute and looked at her. It was a strange thing to feel about a woman who lived this well, but he felt sorry for her. “You have a beautiful house,” he commented, “and lovely things. I'm sorry about your husband,” he said sympathetically. He knew the value of companionship after twenty-eight years with his wife. Even if they were no longer close, they meant a lot to each other. And he could sense Fernanda's loneliness and solitude like a pall that hung over her.

“Me too,” she said sadly in response to Ted's sympathy.

“Was it an accident?”

Fernanda hesitated and looked at him, and the pain he saw in her eyes took his breath away. It was naked and raw. “Probably…we don't know.” She hesitated for a moment, and felt surprisingly comfortable with him, more than she had reason to, and for no reason she could explain, even to herself, she trusted him. “It could have been a suicide. He fell off a boat in Mexico, at night. He was alone on the boat.”

“I'm so sorry,” he said again, and then opened the door and turned back to look at her again. “If there's anything we can ever do for you, let us know.” Meeting her and her children was part of what he liked about his job, and always had. It was the people he met who made it worthwhile for him. And this family had touched his heart. No matter how much money they had, and they appeared to have a lot of it, they had their sorrows too. Sometimes it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, the same things happened to people in all walks of life, at all economic levels, and the rich ones hurt just as much as the poor ones. No matter how big her house was, or how fancy her chandelier, that didn't keep her warm at night, and she was still alone, with three kids to raise on her own. It was no different than if something had happened to him, and Shirley had wound up alone with his boys. He was still thinking about her when he went back to his car, and drove away, and she quietly closed the door.

She went back to her desk after that, and read Jack Waterman's letter again. She called to make an appointment with him, and his secretary said he would call her back the next day. He had left for the day. And at a quarter to seven, she got in her car, and drove to pick Ashley up at ballet. She was in good spirits when she got in the car, and they drove home chatting about the recital, school, and Ashley's many friends. She was still on the cusp of puberty, and liked her mother more than Fernanda knew she would in another year or two. But for now at least, they were still close, and Fernanda was grateful for that.

As they got to the house, Ashley was talking excitedly about her plans to go to Lake Tahoe in July. She could hardly wait for school to be over in June. They were all looking forward to it, although Fernanda knew she would be even lonelier over the summer while Ashley and Will were away. But at least she would have Sam with her. She was glad that he was still so young, and not nearly as independent yet. He liked sticking close to her, even more so now without his dad around, although Allan hadn't paid much attention to him in recent years. He was always too busy. He would have been better off, Fernanda thought to herself as she walked up the front steps, spending more time with his kids than creating the financial disaster he had, that had destroyed their life, and his own, in the end.

She cooked dinner for the kids that night. Everyone was tired, but in better spirits than they'd been in for a while. Sam wore his new star, and they talked about the car bombing up the street again. Fernanda felt slightly better knowing that more than likely it was specifically directed at the judge by someone he had sentenced harshly over the years, than if it had been just a random act of violence directed at anyone. But even at that, it was an unpleasant feeling knowing that there were people out there willing to hurt others and destroy property. She and her children could easily have been injured in the blast if they'd been walking by, and it was just blind luck that no one was, that Mrs. McIntyre was in her house, and the judge was out of town. All three of the Barnes children were fascinated by it. The idea of something so extraordinary happening right on their block, to someone they knew, seemed incredible to them, and to her. But incredible or not, it had happened, and could again. The vulnerability it left Fernanda still feeling when she went to bed that night made her miss Allan more than ever.





Chapter 8


Peter Morgan called every contact he'd ever had in San Francisco before he left, hoping to find a job, or at least line up some interviews. He had just over three hundred dollars in his wallet, and he had to show his parole agent that he was doing his best. And he was. But within his first week back in the city, nothing had panned out. People had moved, faces had changed, people who remembered him either wouldn't take his calls, or did and fobbed him off, sounding stunned to hear from him at all. Four years in a normal life was a long time. And almost everyone who'd ever known him knew he had gone to prison. No one was anxious to see him again. And by the end of the first week, Peter realized he was going to have to lower his sights dramatically, if he wanted to find a job. No matter how useful he had been to the warden while he was in prison, no one in Silicon Valley, or the financial field, wanted anything to do with him. His history was too checkered, and they could only imagine he'd have learned worse tricks than the ones he knew previously, after four years in prison. Not to mention his predilection for addiction, which had ultimately brought him down.

He inquired at restaurants, then small businesses, a record store, and finally a trucking firm. No one had work for him, they thought he was overqualified, overeducated, one man openly called him a smart-ass and a snob. But worse than that, he was an ex-con. He literally could not find work. And at the end of the second week, he had forty dollars in his wallet, and not a single prospect. A tortilla shop near the halfway house offered him half of minimum wage, in cash, to wash dishes, but he couldn't live on it, and they didn't need to pay him more. They had unlimited numbers of illegal aliens at their disposal, who were willing to work for pennies. And Peter needed more than that to survive. He was feeling desperate as he flipped through his old address book again, and when he started at the beginning for the tenth time, he stopped at the same place he always did. Phillip Addison. Until that moment, he had been determined not to call him. He was bad news, and always had been, in every way, and had caused trouble for Peter before. Peter had never been absolutely sure in fact that he hadn't been responsible for the drug bust that had sent him to prison. Peter had owed him a fortune, and was using so much cocaine himself that he had no way to repay him, and still didn't. For whatever reason, Addison had chosen to ignore the debt for the past four years. He knew there had been no way to collect while Peter was in prison. But with good reason, Peter was still leery of him and worried about reminding Addison of the outstanding debt. There was no way he could repay him or ever would, and Addison knew that.

Phillip Addison owned an enormous company openly, it was a high-tech stock listed publicly, and he had half a dozen other, less legitimate, companies he kept concealed, and extensive connections in the underworld. But someone like Addison could always find a place for Peter in one of his shadier companies, and if nothing else, it was work, and decent money. But Peter hated to call him. He had been sucked in by him before, and once he had you, for whatever reason, he owned you. But there was no one else to call at this point. Even gas stations wouldn't hire him. Their clients pumped their own gas, and they didn't want a guy fresh out of prison handling their money. His Harvard MBA degree was virtually useless to him. And most of them laughed at the warden's reference. Peter was truly desperate. He had no friends, no family, no one to call, no one to help him. And his parole agent told him he'd better find work soon. The longer he was out of work, the closer they would watch him. They knew the kind of pressure it put on parolees not to have money, and the kind of activities they resorted to in desperation. Peter was getting panicked. He was nearly out of money, and he had to eat and pay rent, at least.

Two weeks after he'd stepped through the gates of Pelican Bay, Peter sat staring at Phillip Addison's number for nearly half an hour, and then picked up the phone and called him. A secretary told him Mr. Addison was out of the country, and offered to take a message. Peter left his name and number. And two hours later, Phillip called him. Peter was in his room looking grim, when someone shouted up the stairs that there was a call for him from some guy called Addison. Peter ran to the phone, with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It could be the beginning of disaster for him. Or salvation. With Phillip Addison, it could be either.